


The House That Death Built

by apocalypseQuestioner



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Bottom Hannibal Lecter, Bottom Will, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Dominance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Love, M/M, Murder Husbands, POV Will Graham, Pain, Pining, Possessive Behavior, Post-Season/Series 03, Romance, Rough Sex, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Top Hannibal Lecter, Top Will
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27378877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apocalypseQuestioner/pseuds/apocalypseQuestioner
Summary: With the dragon’s burning blood dripping from his jaws, Will embraced the stag and all his antlers. The night was cold and the blood was black and he knew they needed a home. A home where the stag could have his antlers and where he could have his teeth and the blood would always be black.A home that death built.. . .Post-season 3. Hannibal and Will survive their fall, but at what cost? What do you do when you can't live with someone, but can't live without them? Can Will find a place for him and Hannibal?
Relationships: Alana Bloom & Margot Verger, Alana Bloom/Margot Verger, Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 7
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

_I can’t live with you,_

_Can’t live without you._

_Oh, oh, oh._

_What if we went back, oh?_

_To the house that death built._

_What if we went back to the house that death built?_

_Waters, churning, endless hunger._

_We came from water, did you know? All life began there, in the violent here-and-there, crash-and-thrash, sucking depths and dragging darkness. First life, breath, consciousness; legs came to us, soon, and we’re told that we crawled onto earth and learned to straighten spine and raise our eyes towards the sun, but: what if we didn’t? Crashing water, watery limbs grasping arms and pulling down, down, down. What if the ocean spat us out, despondent and disgusted, but we crawled back to her belly and begged to suckle? What if we developed legs so we could fall to our knees and beg to come back home, to slip beneath the rocking waves that didn’t want us anymore, that cast us aside and told us: go, go, go._

_Then, isn’t the ocean such a callous bitch? Because in time we took to the earth and we reluctantly looked towards the sun. But we never forget the waves, we never forgot from where we came, and we formed our wombs in honour of our own salt water mother; we kept our young in a warm well in our bodies, we longed for them to feel what we could not, or simply to be shaped in the image of us._

_But no matter how your mother treats you, it is hard-wired within us to answer her call. It is the instinct that has carried us to this point. The biological law carved into the deepest parts of us. When you don’t know what to do, where do you go? How did nature herself rear you to solve the question, what do I do?_

_With the dragon’s burning blood dripping from his jaws, Will embraced the stag and all his antlers. The night was cold and the blood was black and he knew they needed a home. A home where the stag could have his antlers and where he could have his teeth and the blood could always be black._

_A home that death built._

_So Will strengthened his arms around Hannibal’s body and together, they fell._

_. . ._

_Water chased down his throat, and Will let it._

_He clung to the weight that dragged him down, down, down, and he swallowed all the water he could. Because, like this, they could be together. Here, amongst the waves, they could_ be _. Swallowed by unfeeling and destructive waves, they had a home. There was no right or wrong amongst this blue, just the lurching of bodies held by a callous force. It was simpler here, and he wondered if this was how Hannibal viewed the world. No sense of morality, no ethics, and no guilt to be had. For the ocean didn’t feel bad for how it took hold of Will’s body and slammed him against the ragged cliff-face, splitting his chest like folding paper. It was a question of power and dominance, and the ocean merely took what it was owed._

_It was calming, he thought. The space beneath the waves was calming and simple. He could see the appeal. He wondered (vaguely, vaguely he wondered, because there was no room left in his body for water, and though he was sunk beneath the waves he thought he could hear and feel a black tide lapping at the back of his mind, a dimming light) how many of Hannibal’s victims had fought back against him. Did they writhe, did they struggle? Or did they feel what Will felt right now? An understanding, an acceptance, a quiet—_

_His body lurched. Snatched from the currents and pulled towards something solid, something warm. But ‘something’ was redundant phrasing, because Will knew exactly what it was. What had taken him. What was constricting around his chest and dragging him effortlessly through the heavy, watery throes. Because what else could defy such power? Who else could dominate something completely unfeeling, undaunted, and endlessly angry? He parted his lips to reason, to explain why he had taken them into this darkness, to talk of antlers and teeth and the blackest of blood, but there was so much water in his body, his lungs, his stomach, and he only took in more. Soon it would erase his possession. There would be no need for pronouns. He would not be he and his lungs would not be his, but instead the. The lungs of the ocean. The lungs the ocean took. The lungs he gave to the waves._

_His body lurched once more, this time further. He peered open his eyes and barely felt the sting of salt. The black-blue-dark around him began to lighten. The water swirled and jolted unevenly close by. Defiance. He—not Will,_ He _—was striking out, batting away the ocean’s hungry maw, churning his feet to carry them forward. Should Will be fighting, too? But why? He had brought them here, to the place that could be their home. Was he prey for longing for it? But, how could he be prey when there was still blood amongst his teeth? Prey blood, sour and thin. When his muscles—those not numb from the cold waves—still ached from the hunt. But, oh, what did it matter? Maybe there was a place between for him, never prey but not predator. Maybe that was the place he was taking them. Antlers and teeth and blood turned black. Black antlers and bloody teeth. Antler teeth and blood black. And Him._

_The thought soothed Will. Him, him, him. Death could build the house but it would not be a home without Him._

_And then his head broke water, and the dark of night came down upon him and birthed him raw._

. . .

Sudden instinct seized him in a clawed grasp, and Will fought with virile rage to suck in breath. But there was so much water inside of him, and when he tore his mouth open it all leaked out. With it it carried the blood, the sharp-burning-salty-searing dragon’s blood, and the absence of his spoils of slaughter made him panic. Made him shudder. The water was a terrible beast who coiled around his legs and tried to drown him. Tried to drag him under. He’d sunk willingly beneath the waves and thought of home but now with the biting frigid-freezing-screaming wind on his cheek and neck he felt alive, or his body did, or some part of him felt real enough to howl and shudder. The home he sought had teeth, bared at the last moment, and he clung to the solid form that clung to him. Legs found waist and arms found neck and waterlogged nails (did they even still bear proof of his dragon slay?) scrabbled at skin. He tried to breathe but there was too much water. It flooded out of him. It snarled with bubbling rage at his weak attempts to dispel it. It liked his lungs and his stomach and it wanted to stay. It wanted him. He was prey and his predator—

“Will,” came a voice—the voice of a predator. But not the predator that yearned to drag him below, to drown him. The predator that he clung to, the predator that kept his head above the waves. “Can you hear me?”

Will could hear him, but what could he do about it? He couldn’t speak past all the water in his mouth, his lungs, his stomach. His eyes slid shut, and as they did he found a comforting blackness wholly unlike the blue-dark-drown that he’d just been torn from. A blackness that whispered a different sort of tide, a lapping whisper at the back of his mind, tempting him towards its calm embrace, offering an encompassing, calm, quiet-numb—  
  
“Not that way,” came the predator’s voice, soft and whispered and guiding. “Towards me, Will. Towards my voice.”

Will turned his head towards the voice. Turned his body towards it. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. It was warmth and elegance and steady. A soft rasp. But how was he turning his head? His body? He couldn’t feel the latter, and the former was a heavy weight that bent his neck. But he had a body he could move and a head he could turn, and the dark oceanic night began to flicker. The blue waves became blue walls and the distant hanging moon split and curved into two hollow tusks. The black and churning surface of the water became a table, elongated and slender. The voice was there, with him, a golden light of velvet and silk, radiant at the edges. He was in two places at once, freezing and dry, drowning and standing, dying and—living?

“We are almost there,” said the predator’s voice, and the wispy golden light glowed with each cadence, each syllable. “Look up, Will. Towards the stars. You are still beneath them, and so am I.”

Will lifted his head. The ceiling of the room cracked and split away and revealed a night sky full of gleaming lights, all silver and knife-sharp. Dimly he wondered how this could be. How he could be both drowning in the ocean and standing in Hannibal’s dining room. Was this a memory palace? Had he found his own? He kept his eyes on the stars above his head. He took a deep breath and found that he could. The smell of smoke, oleander, pine and basil came to him. Oregano, parsley, garlic, ginger, nutmeg—

“What are you making?” he asked, his voice perfectly unbroken.

The golden light before him seemed to smile. “A place. For us.”  
  
Will frowned. He’d been asking about cooking. “When’s it going to be ready?”

“Soon,” said the golden light. As it pulsed with the word, the dining table began to fade and the stars above started to fall like silver rain. “Soon, _mylimasis_.”  
  
Will didn’t want to go. The air was dry here and he could breathe. It didn’t matter that he was drowning in the other place, that his lungs were flooded and his chest was split and sobbing blood. None of that could touch him here. But the stars were falling like rain, and they covered him until he was soaked. Until they fell past his lips and into his lungs and took his breath.

Then, with a quiet slowness, a single silver droplet ran the curve of his chin and the bow of his neck. When it reached his chest it shattered, and he watched himself burst open.

The pain tore him from the comforting warmth of his memory palace. He expected water and drowning and no-room-left-inside, but instead was delivered upon rough and coarse earth and battered at each side with terrible, howling wind. For a moment he longed for the ocean. Longed for the sensation of being held on all sides. Long to be restrained into a sense of safety. Out here (where? where was here?) he felt raw, exposed, vulnerable. That was until the pallid and silvery moonlight that shown down upon his body was cast aside by shadows, a broad figure rearing over him. Warmth touched him, brushed him, heavy and wet but unmistakable heat. First his legs, his hips, his sides—he was numb, too numb to do anything but shudder and shake, but he recognised the touch of Hannibal’s hands. His palms. Broad as him, wide, purposeful. Familiar.

“Will,” Hannibal’s voice rung above the din of gale. Cut through the howling slaughter. Sliced through the whipping wind and made a place for itself. “I need you to listen to my voice. I need you to focus upon it. Ignore all else. Take each of my words in your mind. Hold them there.”

Will tried to nod, but his body was not his own. He felt like an observer sitting too close to the stage. He was neither actor nor audience. Living nor dead. He found himself between two worlds, but at least he had His voice with him, here. So he did as Hannibal said (after all, when has he not?) and fell into his words and all their golden light, allowing the glittering silk to bind his wrists and ghost across his veins. He wondered if this was truly how it felt to die. He expected to feel an uneven and sudden jolt from his heart at the thought. Waited for panic and fear. But all he felt was nothing and a dull pain that came and went, removed and distant. If this was death, he thought, then it was fitting that Hannibal was with him. He could imagine no other passing. He considered his life before Hannibal and every near-death moment, such as the time he slipped while ice-fishing on Lake Montebello. The ice had cracked beneath his feet and failed to come back together again, and when the frigid waters numbed his body and dragged him down, he’d been convinced that he’d met his end.

But now in hindsight it felt silly. Just as it felt silly to remember the certainty he felt that he was going to die when he was a very young boy on the docks with his father, and he’d slipped on a slimy plank of wood and clung to the edges of the pier, refusing to look over his shoulder at the harsh drop into hard, rocky ground. The tide had been out. Death was certain. But it wasn’t, was it? No, not at all. He had nothing to worry about. Death was saving itself, and there was nothing in life that could touch him until Him.

Will did not live until he met Hannibal, and likewise he would not die without him. Now that he could see that, it seemed so obvious. Why had he ever been afraid?

Warmth soothed the freezing skin of his chin, tilting his head backwards. Pressure squeezed the bridge of his nose. Warm, rough lips crushed against his and forced breath into his body, breath that glided down his throat still lashing with salt-sunk-water. But there was no room in his body for it, not until he felt hands come down upon his split-bleeding-broken chest and force the water out.

All at once Will was dragged back into his body. All at once he felt arms, legs, fingers, toes, throat—he gasped and shuddered and shook, he jerked onto his side and threw up lungfuls of water that fell from him in an endless flood. “There,” came a voice, faint behind the tsunami. “Get it out, Will. All of it.”

Will didn’t feel like he had much of a choice. Pain exploded in his body all bright-white-searing, but he continued to cough and heave until he finally felt empty. He didn’t realise how full the water had made him until it was gone, and with a low keen he sunk back down and drew ragged, desperate breaths. His vision was blurred, the world spun, and only faintly could he make out Hannibal’s face above him, all sharp planes glowing at their edges with moonlight. Behind him was a backdrop of stars, and for a moment the pain became so much that the distant lights seemed to fall like rain, just like they had in his memory palace. He opened his mouth to speak, to explain, but all he could muster was a rasping gasp, a hoarse cough.

“You must save your energy,” Hannibal murmured, placing a hand upon Will’s cheek. His touch was so warm that it burned him. “If you are to survive this. I have faith that you will.”

Will tried once more to speak, but when no sound fell from his lips he resigned to thinking his response. _Survive this?_ he stared at the vague, churning shape of Hannibal above him. _I survived you, didn’t I?_ In place of speaking he tried to touch, tried to reach out towards Hannibal and feel the living _beat-beat-beat_ of his heart, his pulse, or the thrum of life beneath his skin just to assure himself that this was real, but his body was heavy and unresponsive and when he lifted himself an inch, Hannibal pushed him back down. “You are hurt, Will,” he said, calm and steady and quiet. “Do not try to move.”

Will gazed at him, blind and lost. He rolled his head to the side, enough to try and look at his chest, but all he could see was a pool of black blood from his neck to his ribs. When he drew his next breath he felt broken, wrong, his wilting lungs pushing against bone that should not be there, his body rising and falling with foreign movement. “ _Help,”_ he wheezed out, every letter a knife-tip splitting the delicate flesh inside his throat. “H-Help me…”

“Would that I could, Will,” Hannibal said softly, stroking his thumb across Will’s cheek, leaving a burning blaze in its wake. “Would that I could,” he repeated, this time with the faintest weight in his tone, a whisper of a crack.

“I-It—” Will couldn’t stop shaking. His teeth chattered so violently that he caught his lip and his mouth filled with blood—but this was not dragon’s blood, not boiling-searing-hot-violent, but his own. Thin and watery and sour. Prey blood. Was he prey, after all? “I-It w-w-was f-for us,” he forced out, feeling his body seize and jolt as the pain dug deeper and deeper. “W-We c-c-could b-be, there, u-us.”

Hannibal stared down at him, drawing the tip of this thumb across the thin skin beneath Will’s eye. “Is that the only place you see for us?”

_Yes._ The word stuck in his throat. He saw a place for them in the dark-deep-blue, in the calm-violent-thrashing, in the endless-heavy-drowning. There was nothing there but them and isn’t that the only place they can be? How could they possibly exist here? In the howling gale, in the open space, in the uncertainty of freedom and choice. It was too much. There was too much. It was terrifying.

Hannibal rose from over Will, spilling moonlight back onto his broken body. Panic flared in his ruined chest and he struck out, trying to grasp at Hannibal’s wrist. “D-Don’t,” Will pleaded. “D-Don’t g-g-go.”

Hannibal had fallen just as he had. Hannibal had been thrown about by the waves and soaked through, yet he stood while Will lay. His hair was flat against his head, his shirt clinging to every inch of leonine muscle in his body. The light of the moon made him glow. Turned the colour of his antlers to silver. Accentuated every violent edge. Hannibal effortlessly pulled his arm away, Will’s hand falling limp and useless back at his side. “I must.”

“No,” Will gasped, edging onto his elbows to try and push himself up. The pain struck him like lightning, but still he tried. “P-Please—”

“You must find a place for me, Will,” Hannibal said, tilting his head towards the dark of night and all the raining silver stars. “A place for us.”

Will tried to speak. Tried to shake his head. Tried to rescind his words because how could Hannibal be leaving again? He had endured this pain once, had died and fell into maddening politeness except it wasn’t just _politeness,_ it was numb and nothing and empty and cruel. It was a world without colour or point or feeling. He’d told himself it was better, reasoned to himself that he just needed time, but those three years dragged like centuries, and his short time back with Hannibal felt like seconds. Savagely alive, endlessly feeling, violently meaningful seconds.

But Hannibal was leaving. He lowered his head. For a moment Will hoped he would look at him, that _he_ could look at him, that he could stare at Hannibal’s face and commit it to better memory. For he no longer had just a stream, he had the fledgling of a palace but it was no palace at all if Hannibal was not in it. He wanted not just the golden light of his voice but _him._ But Hannibal didn’t look back. He walked away from Will. The only betrayal of their fall being the whisper of a limp in his step. A tired slope of his shoulders. So minute that Will knew only he could see it. Nobody else would notice. There were gestures and movements reserved only for him.

Soundlessly, he opened his mouth. He sought to call Hannibal’s name. But there was no sound. Only the crashing of the waves against the shore, and the silence of the night. And the _nothing_ that was intrinsically bound to Hannibal’s absence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all very much for your kindness on the first chapter of The House That Death Built! I wasn't expecting it, but I appreciate it so very much. While I can't accurately say how long this fic will end up being, I have a story in mind that I'm excited to tell. Hopefully you'll enjoy it too. Now, onto chapter two!

The sirens came but Will was still, lying motionless amongst the rocky brush of the shore, like a fawn left behind by its mother. Every instinct kept him frozen, hiding, waiting with hope that they would not find him. He was not ready to be found. He was split open and broken and waiting for Hannibal to return. Waiting for his husky whisper of _Will_ and (despite how he disliked it) his arms hooking beneath him, carrying him. Carrying him away to a place they could be which Will himself could not see. He wanted to close his eyes and tilt his head back and be carried to the place where they could make sense and antlers could be antlers and teeth could be teeth and blood—well, you know.  
  
But the sirens howled louder and he knew that the louder they were the further Hannibal was. Dimly he heard shouts, orders, voices familiar and foreign—he could hear Jack, and instead of deriving comfort or fear he laughed. He laughed, a rough cough that spat blood from his mouth and filled his chest with the feeling of broken glass crunching together.

Because Jack and Hannibal were opposing forces, repulsing magnets, two south poles that shoved the other away. And if Jack was here, calling his name _(“Will? Will! Can you hear me, Will?”)_ then Hannibal was far, far away. Even if Will found the strength to call his name Hannibal would not hear, even if divine intervention came down upon him and carried him upright he would be left searching the darkness forever, bare soles tearing upon the rocky shore, because if Hannibal did not want to be found he would not be.  
  
It never truly hit Will until that moment what that meant. How Hannibal was smoke and the only time he was with Will was because he wanted to be. That Will had no control over his presence, his company. That he may never again.  
  
Will laughed. A single, rasping choke-cough-gasp. He heard Jack’s voice falter. Then it grew louder, louder, louder. Will didn’t call. Didn’t laugh again. He laid still in the grass, hoping he would not be found.  
  
But, of course, he was.

  
  
. . .

Will’s world became a series of hands, touches, concerned voices and rugged ups-and-downs. He felt Jack’s broad hands grasp at his shoulders and then recoil, heard him curse under his breath, faint and mortified. He touched at his face, and Will hated that he did: because previously his cheek still burned from where Hannibal stroked, but now it washed away into nothing. He called his name, squeezed his jaw, tried to coax Will to look at him but Will—didn’t.  
  
He retreated into himself. At first he sought the fledging palace that had sprung in Hannibal’s wake, his respite and waypoint amongst the blue-black waves, but he found himself off-path and without map. Without route. Without compass. He remembered how it had felt, he remembered the two ivory tusks on the mantle and the long, unbroken dark of Hannibal’s dining table, but could not find his way inside. He circled paths that he thought were familiar until he gave in, and he sought out the place he knew he could find: the stream.  
  
He came to briefly before he found his shallow, clear waters. His body was restrained and pinned down, and the world rocked back-and-forth in an unsettlingly similar manner to how the ocean had cradled him; but as he slowly blinked his eyes he saw white walls, wires, and a glimpse of Jack’s eyes-wide, slack-jawed look of shock. Jack mouthed his name, drew closer, but his face left a trail and the edges of Will’s world began to fade. He let his eyes close. He returned to his stream.  
  
He found the waters easy enough. They were down a well-trodden path, one he could sense even if struck blind or deaf. He lingered on the bank, listening to the quiet whisper of the stream rolling over rocks and the distant birdsong. He looked towards the trees and all their autumn colours, but they were not warm. The water did not flow as it did before, with an innate and unavoidable elegance. It tumbled haphazardly over itself, reflecting the ragged poor-fitting mix-match of grey clouds above his head.  
  
The stream was not the same. Will lingered on the bank and lowered his head. He made no attempts to wade forward.

  
  
. . .

Not for the first time, Will came to in a hospital bed.  
  
He came to, drifted, came to, and drifted again. Each time he peered open his eyes the scene before him would change, sometimes minutely and other times dramatically. Sometimes there would be a small herd of people in whitecoats stood around his bedside, peering down at him and scribbling on clipboards while others spoke in quick, focused voices. Other times the chair in the corner of the room would be filled, often with familiar faces. He saw Jack (who looked tired and vacant), Alana (who looked shell-shocked and tearful), and even once Price and Zeller, who stood in the doorway and looked uncomfortable and sad.  
  
Will would peer at their faces in the scant seconds his consciousness allowed him, but within their expressions, both forlorn and broken, he saw nothing worth resurfacing for. It wasn’t until much later that he realised he should have been looking for Molly. He didn’t question her absence. He didn’t expect her. There was only one person he was expecting (hoping, traitorously and unreasonably praying) to see, and He made no appearance. Will didn’t expect to see Him. But some small, unrealistic, child-like version of him hoped that all logic and reason would cease to exist and that he would open his eyes and see His tall form spread out in the chair beside him. His mind stole memories of years before, and moulded the image of Him into the present.  
  
But it was only images. Ghosts. Wishes. It could never be tangible or true. Will knew. But after everything, it would be wrong not to hope. Wouldn’t it?  
  
Lucidity returned to him despite how he rejected it. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but a morning came where his eyes peered open and did not immediately flutter shut, when the bland hospital furniture spread out around him and the vine-like white wires swam into focus rather than trailing and blurring. Will resented how time returned to him, how no longer he could slip into the darkness of his mind and wait for the world to move on without him enduring each day. But no matter how he lay still under his thin sheets, his mind did not sink. His body began to warm and work. The dulled noise around him became clear. There was a shape in the chair beside him, and after a moment he saw familiar dark hair and teary eyes.  
  
“Will,” Alana breathed, her words revenant and whispered, as if the sight before her was somehow holy. “Will, oh, Will. Can you hear me?”  
  
Will stared at her. Her words were familiar, somehow. He waited for a moment, as if drawing out time would make it go away, but in the end he managed a slow, barely-there nod. “Yes.”

Alana leapt to her feet in one fluid motion and then slowed as she approached his bed. She reached out with shaking palms as if about to touch something sacred and fragile. She paused a breath away from his arm. “How do you feel?”  
  
 _Dead. Otherworldly. Drifting._ “Tired.”

Alana smiled, a wobbly barely-there-almost-broken smile that drew out wrinkles on her face born surely from exhaustion. “But you’re here. You’re really, really here.”  
  
She wanted him to smile back. She wanted him to smile back and say _yes, I am,_ and then give a tired laugh, a I-suffered-but-I-lived laugh, but Will couldn’t bring himself to fake it. Instead, numbly, he rasped, “I’m here.”  
  
Sympathy coloured Alana’s eyes, but Will found himself repulsed by it. He didn’t want sympathy. He didn’t _know_ what he wanted. But it wasn’t sympathy and it wasn’t Alana, it wasn’t this hospital bed and it wasn’t this time, this world, this anything. He wanted a different ending (what ending?) a different world (what world?) and he wanted different company (he knew what company). He wanted sense and there was only one person who would make this make sense. But that person was the only one to not arrive.  
  
Alana opened her mouth to speak, shut it, and then opened it again. “Are you thirsty?”  
  
It (clearly) wasn’t what she intended to say, but Will knew that she wanted to feel useful or helpful so despite feeling absolutely nothing except a grand emptiness, he nodded his head. She picked up a cup of water from the side and held the straw to his lips, and he drank—but as soon as the water touched his tongue something in his brain flared, and he spat a cough. Pain followed, the type of pain that blacks out your vision and flashes white behind your eyes—it burnt Will’s throat, it filled his chest with glass, and suddenly he couldn’t catch his breath. He was dimly aware of Alana trying to help him, touching his arm and holding his shoulder, but it took several long and painful seconds for him to be able to breathe again. When he could, his body wilted backwards and all he could do is close his eyes and wheeze.  
  
When he came to, Alana was once more looking at him with sympathy. On some low level, it bothered him more. But on most levels, he couldn’t summon a reaction. His body suddenly felt so tired, so defeated and heavy. There was a question on his tongue, but he knew he didn’t need to hurt himself to voice it—it was what Alana was about to tell him, a weight that everybody felt but him. He imagined instead what he would say. _My relationship with ignorance died long ago, Alana. Tell me what happened to me._

Alana looked decidedly uncomfortable, wringing her hands before putting on a brave face. “You’ll recover,” she started, which was _not_ a good sign at-fucking-all. “You have broken bones, some damage to your lungs, and they’ll need to assess you to see if there’s any damage to your brain from the lack of oxygen.”

“Broken bones?” Will rasped questioningly.

“Your sternum,” Alana explained, her eyes flicking down to Will’s chest. “And… most of your ribs. The doctors said the tides must have thrown you against the cliff. I don’t suppose you remember—?”

Alana trailed off. Will stared forward. Instinct, deep in his gut, warned him against the truth. He remembered well enough, but he knew not to admit to it, not yet. He also knew that if _He_ was here, He’d tell him much the same. To guard his recollection of the events carefully, if he wanted to tell the version of events he wanted and be believed. Instead of answering directly, Will offered her a vague but tired look. Alana could read whatever she wanted within it and if it later contradicted what Will said, he could claim she read him wrong. It wouldn’t be the first (or last) time that somebody misunderstood him.  
  
“Apart from that,” Alana continued, sinking back down into her chair. “You have some cuts, some bruises. The worst is the one on your face. They said you got that one before you fell, that it was from a blade. Was that from…?”  
  
She trailed off again. Will knew the question was not _was_ but _who._ He knew that she wanted him to say His name so she didn’t have to, like he was speaking some curse, that if he said His name three times in a mirror He would appear behind him. In a way Will understood her, because he certainly didn’t want to speak His name. Didn’t want to bring Him into the room in a way that wasn’t complete. Didn’t want to summon the image of Him when it would only make his emptiness worse. Like a widower turning down photos of the one she lost because the memories are never quite the same, and they often only make it hurt all the more, like terrible taunts burned into the walls of the mind.  
  
“Will,” Alana broke his reprieve, her voice gaining a faint, but firm edge. “I know that you’re tired, and that you’re still in pain. But they’re going to be asking you questions, and they won’t take silence for an answer.”  
  
Will fought the urge to turn his head away. He didn’t like it when she took that tone, when it felt like she was trying to _mother_ him, mostly because it felt strange. It was lifetimes ago, sure, but he still remembered when he kissed her and she’d rejected him, not because he resented her for that choice but because it made him wonder. He wondered often what would have happened if she hadn’t, if the stars above their heads had been different, if the moon was higher or the grass was dew-tipped rather than frost-bit. He would have been miserable, sure, he knew that much. But things would have different. Wouldn’t they?  
  
For the first time his thoughts drifted to Molly, and he supposed they wouldn’t have. Because he already tried that. He tried to be normal and do as normal people do, he took a wife and a child and did the fishing-with-dad-on-Saturday and no-cartoons-before-dinner and did-you-pick-up-milk-I-told-you-to-pick-up-milk-yes-I-can-go-tomorrow-just-leave-enough-for-cereal. And look where he ended up. Look where it took him. Look how three years did nothing when it came down to it. How gravity and satellites and solar winds carried him back here, broken and longing. Thinking not about Molly or Wally or Jack or anyone. Anyone but Him. As if there was something bound between them, a scarlet string wound around their fingers, one that could stretch and stretch and stretch but would always snap back, pulling them inescapably close.  
  
But how many times could they snap back? He, surely, could survive it each time, but Will? He was loathe to think it, to resent it, because he knew the certainty of their return to each other was one of the only parts of his life that felt real and stable, but he knew it was unsustainable. He knew that if he didn’t slice off his finger that one day he would die, that he should have died a hundred times before now, that the right thing to do would be to hold his wrist to the table and bring the guillotine down and if he bled out, so be it. Surely it was better to bleed out. Surely it was the right thing to do.  
  
The thought constricted his chest. He blinked away a stab of pain and avoided Alana’s gaze as she broken the cocoon of their room with what they had both avoided. “They didn’t find his body, Will. You have guards posted outside your door.”  
  
“You think he’d reduce himself down to coming in through a _door?”_ Will rasped, unable to help himself. But from the look on Alana’s face, it wasn’t the response she wanted. Or liked.  
  
“They want to know what happened,” Alana said slowly. “They want to know what you did, and where _he_ is.”

“And I’m supposed to know?”  
  
Alana pursed her lips. “You were the last one with him,” she said softly. “And he didn’t kill you.”  
  
Will remembered how He’d carried him through the tides, fought unflinching against the waves, guided him with his voice. _Why didn’t you let me drown? Why didn’t we drown together?_ “So?” he rasped.  
  
“You’re either alive because _he’s_ dead, but we have no body. Or you’re alive because he kept you alive, and that means you might know where he is. He may have told you.”  
  
“You’re overestimating Doctor Lecter’s transparency.”  
  
“With anybody but you, I would be,” Alana said, with a sudden knowing look in her eyes that made Will feel dull inside. “But, you two…”  
  
Will looked away. Found a place on the wall to focus his eyes on. A hanging white wire with a slit along its length. “For all you know, Alana, I don’t remember a thing.”

“Is that what you’re going to tell the FBI?”  
  
Silence crept around them like an unwelcome guest. Will broke it without looking at Alana, his eyes tracing the split in the cable, just a few scant fibres away from breaking completely. Becoming two different ends. Possessing their own start and beginning. Individual, but all the lesser for their separation. Individuality at the cost of the death of purpose. “I’ll tell them the truth,” he murmured. “I don’t know where Hannibal Lecter is. And, for the sake of my best interest, it might be time for me to stop pursuing him.”

. . .

All in all, Will concluded that his stay in hospital wasn’t his worst.  
  
The eight months of recovery required by his stomach injury (he called it that, The Stomach Injury, rather than attributing blame or cause, not because he questioned intentions but because it was part of his _plan_ ) was far worse. This time around with all the breaks in his chest he didn’t have to re-learn to eat or drink (although, perhaps he did have to relearn to drink, to accept water on his tongue) or walk. It was a great deal of resting but not too much resting, stop-moving-so-much and you’re-not-moving-enough, be careful of your breathing but breathe deeply, yes-you-have-to-sleep-with-this-ice-on-your-chest, no-you-can’t-stop-taking-your-medication-yet-stop-asking.  
  
The nurses were tolerable enough at first but grew annoying the more they took notice of him. His mind was such a battleground of stormy thoughts and endless hanging questions that he couldn’t find it within himself to fake smiles or optimism, and it didn’t take long for them to try to _fix_ him. They’d waltz into his room with upbeat greetings, sing-songing _oh, good morning mister Graham!_ followed shortly by _so, what are your plans for today then?_ in such a sickly-sweet, everything-is-fine, I-have-never-looked-into-the-eyes-of-the-devil-and-saw-more-than-just-the-flames way. Will had never fit into society before Him, and he didn’t exactly find a place after Him, but he didn’t realise just how isolated and out-of-place he’d become until he had to endure the nurses day-in, day-out.  
  
Will didn’t belong here, among _them._ Among the people whose worst experience of humanity was being mugged by daylight or simple, serene selfishness. He felt like a man who’d been scooped up by some higher being (he avoided the G word or the D word, but he leant more towards the latter) and shown the world on some other plane, past the gaze and shape of mortals, where colours were abound and emotions and feelings struck deeper than anyone could have hoped. Then, after observing this other place, this expansive newness, this other side, he was promptly dropped back into the grey-drab-nothing, the nurse-offering-water, the _did-you-see-that-squirrel-outside-your-window-mister-Graham?-Oh-I-love-squirrels-with-their-bushy-tails—_

But as much as he didn’t belong here, he didn’t know how to belong elsewhere. The realm he’d glimpsed was not made for him. He didn’t know how to make a place for himself within those walls made of colours he had no name for. It didn’t matter how he longed or yearned for it. He wasn’t going to force himself to make peace with where he was but he had to stop wanting for the alternative. He had to take the guillotine to his wrist and accept the misery that bled out.

Will had no choice. That was his _plan._ He wouldn’t make himself enjoy where he was, but he had to stop yearning for the other place.  
  
As weeks passed, he learned to tolerate the nurses. They would prompt him for the date each time they saw him (they’d noticed, it seemed, his general disregard for the passage of time) and he answered them, just as long as they didn’t start pulling out notebooks and asking him to draw a clock. The breaks in his chest healed well enough, but his coughing never quite went away. Alana visited often, and he would often have another fit in her presence when he spoke too quickly or didn’t level his voice and tone, and she would look at him with that same sympathy that he wished he could gouge out and erase completely. The look she would surely give to a doll her son owned if after several weeks of rough playing it lost an arm. The _you’re-broken-and-you’ll-never-be-the-same-but-this-was-bound-to-happen-and-maybe-this-will-teach-you-a-lesson_ look.  
  
Will hated it. Almost as much as he hated how his body betrayed him. He took to avoiding his mouth completely. He talked less and soon was given smaller gowns to wear by the nurses when he shrunk inside his frame. Whenever he drank water he’d have nightmares that night about being alone in the dark-blue-black, and whenever he forced down food it tasted as flavourful as damp bark. The nurses assumed he was nauseous from his pain medication. He didn’t bother telling them that he had given up entirely on this life.  
  
The FBI came (of course they did) with familiar and foreign faces. Mostly Jack, sometimes Kade Purnell, and other times people that Will didn’t care to know or remember. They asked him mostly the same questions in different tones of voice and from changing body compositions. Jack would sink into the chair beside his bed like a man deflated and defeated, while Kade Purnell would sit upright and glower at him with her beady bird eyes and snippy harpy voice. They tried every approach on him possible. They all wanted to know the same thing. Will gave them the same answer, over and over.  
  
“I don’t know where he is,” he repeated, day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month, his voice wilting with each repetition, barely-there petals drooping to their death until his words were nothing but a decayed stem. “I don’t want to know where he is. I want to go home. I want this to be over.”  
  
Jack would sigh in the way that he always did, holding his chin and rubbing his cheek and looking far too old for this life. Will wondered how much of a mirror he was. He’d stopped looking in mirror years ago, aware that the pallid, one-dimensional reflection no longer showed who he really was. It baffled him that he used to rely on mirrors to understand himself. Now it felt silly. Who he was was skin-deep and unseen by all but Him.  
  
But it made sense in terms of his _plan_ so Will allowed himself to believe it, and soon it became part of his mantra. “I don’t know where he is,” he’d say, over-and-over, to Kade Purnell and all her avian hostility. “I don’t want to know where he is. I’m too old for this life. I want this to be over.”  
  
“He’ll come after you,” she snapped, high and chirping. “Unless you help us. Unless you find him first and put him down for good.”  
  
For a moment Will paused, and in the storms of his mind he allowed himself to think the words he wished he could say. The honesty that could never be. _I’m not too old for this life. My life with Him was the only life I ever wanted. But I cannot find a place for Him, for me, for us. I don’t know how to fit Him into my life and I don’t know how to fit into His. It does not matter what I want. It does not matter that I wish more than anything that there was a place for us. Because I don’t know where that place is. I don’t know how to make it. I would need His help. And He is not here.  
  
_ But of course he didn’t say that. He let his gaze drift across the room until he saw the slit cable. The threads had broken just a day ago, when a busy nurse hustled in and haphazardly arranged the various medical equipment that surrounded him like faceless observers. Will had seen it snap and fall away, but he didn’t mention it. It wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but him. The snapped cable didn’t seem to affect any of the machines. Alana didn’t notice. Jack didn’t notice. To them, it was nothing.  
  
To Will, it was everything.  
  
“I don’t know where he is,” he repeated, finally, in a barely-there murmur. “And it’s best for me that I don’t. I just want to go home.”

  
  
. . .

  
  
“You _bought_ my house?”  
  
The day was overcast and Will had forgotten how fresh air felt in his chest. It chased down, raw and cold, and for the first time in six long months, he felt like he could breathe.  
  
It didn’t last long (of course it didn’t) because as Alana was helping him into her car, something caught in his chest and he started coughing. Alana was patient, placing a hand on his shoulder and waiting for it to pass before she shut the door behind him and climbed into the driver’s seat. It wasn’t _supposed_ to be six months. The doctors had told him he needed to stay only five, but when his coughing fits persisted they kept him longer. They ran tests, took blood, forced him through x-rays and all manner of scans and came up with no real explanation and certainly no solution. _“It could get better,”_ said one barely helpful doctor with a disinterested look on his face as he leafed through several pages attached to his ratty clipboard. _“This might be temporary. Just try not to stress yourself out or put yourself in situations that might lead to heavy breathing.”  
_  
There was an implication in his voice that Will ignored, because it had been months since he was in the mood to laugh. He didn’t even have it in him to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. He just replied, dull and numb, _“and if it doesn’t get better?”_  
  
 _“I’ve heard you tell a few people that you’re too old for this life, mister Graham,”_ the doctor replied with a shrug. _“Maybe you are. Considering the life you’ve lived, some coughing fits is a small price to pay for your life. Nobody would blame you for retiring.”_

Alana buckled in and watched as Will did the same. “Well, it was up for sale. And something told me you would want to return to it one day.”  
  
“Margot didn’t mind?”  
  
“Of course not,” Alana shook her head, putting the key in the engine. Her car rumbled to life beneath them, and she slowly reversed. She’d told Will that she’d drive slow, and he’d just looked away. He didn’t like being treated _delicate._ “Besides, it wasn’t that expensive.”  
  
Alana looked at him, a teasing smile at the edges of her tired lips, and though Will felt more inclined to try and show emotion to Alana rather than anyone else, he still couldn’t manage it. He just sort of stared at her, wishing he could be the person she clearly wanted him to be, until she looked back to the road and sighed. “I don’t think you’re ready to leave hospital, Will.”  
  
“The doctors seem too.”  
  
Alana looked at him. Sadness darkened her gaze. Will couldn’t meet her gaze for more than a second. “They don’t know you,” she said softly. “And neither do I, because this isn’t you. You went through something that none of us can imagine, Will, and these past six months I’ve just been waiting for you to come back. Thinking that one of these days I’ll walk into your hospital room and I’ll see you again, but…”  
  
Alana trailed off. Will stared out of the window, wanting nothing more than to withdraw into the isolation of his mind. He never found the palace again, and the stream was never the same, but it was the only place he could be truly alone. “You didn’t have to keep visiting me.”  
  
“Don’t,” Alana said softly. “Don’t do that, Will.”  
  
“I’m not doing anything.”  
  
Alana opened her mouth to speak. Then, slowly, she closed it. She took her eyes off Will and stared straight ahead, and Will ignored the tears that gleamed in the curve of her eyes. They drove. Will stared out of his window. Neither made an attempt to speak again.

Not until the familiar arched silhouette of Will’s farmhouse came into sight, looking just as it had the last time Will saw it. The only difference was in nature’s encroaching grasp, how in just a short amount of time the grass had grown long and the bushes had become wiry and untamed. The sparse tendrils of ivy that clung to the second floor windows had become thick and stubborn, no doubt crawling with all sorts of insects that would sneak through his drafting windows to appropriate the warmth of his house.  
  
It was home, the home that Will had longed for and asked for for six entire months. The subject of every discussion with Kade, Jack, and multiple doctors. _I want to go home,_ he repeated. _I want to go home._  
  
But here he was, home. And it didn’t feel like home. He stared at the house before him and felt dull and empty and lost, like his final attachment to this world had snapped and he was finally drifting in the vast-unknown-nothing.  
  
Alana cut the engine. Dogs began to bark. Will sat up (a little too fast, his chest strained and ached with it) and shot a look at her.  
  
“I’ve been looking after them, too,” she nodded. “Margot helped. Sometimes she brought Morgan with her. He likes dogs. He must take after you.”  
  
“I don’t think you want that, Alana.”  
  
She looked at him sadly. “Will, I don’t care what the doctors say. You’re my friend, you’re _all_ our friend. Jack, Price, Zeller, Margot… we care about you, and it’s not good for you to be out here by yourself.”  
  
Dull panic flared inside Will. He looked at her sharply, nervously. “You drove me here just to taunt me?”  
  
“No,” Alana said quickly. “But… let us visit you. I want Morgan to know you. I don’t want Winston to forget me. I know you need time, Will, and you can have that time. But you’re fading, Will. Let us keep you afloat.”

“What are you going to do if I say no?”  
  
Alana simply stared at him. Will, reluctantly, met her gaze and lowered his head in defeat. It wouldn’t help him. It would only make him feel worse. Jack and Alana felt like relics from the past, taunting pillars of a time he could no longer return to. Will could still hear His voice wound around them, His energy, His everything. All of them were bound together in a bloody lump of misery. _We’re all just a failed suicide pact,_ he thought morosely. _It doesn’t make sense to be scattered and living. We owed death to each other. This is just borrowed, ugly time._  
  
But he didn’t want Alana to feel sad. He didn’t want anyone to feel sad because of him. He wanted to find a place to slip out of their lives without leaving a single impression of his presence. He’d find a way to do that eventually, but if letting Alana or Jack visit every other day would make them feel better, then whatever. He’d do it for as long as they needed. Then, when they had their fill and felt better, he could drift.  
  
“Come on,” Alana said, unbuckling her seatbelt and leaning over to do the same for Will. “They’re all waiting for you.”  
  
As if on cue, his dogs began to bark louder. Trying to out-pace Alana, Will opened his door and tried to shuffle out to prove that he _could_ do it alone, but she was there before he could put a single foot on the ground. Her hands hovered, guiding and supporting him, and he decided to allow her that. If it was what she needed. “I don’t want to ruin any of your plans, Alana, but all I want to do right now is sleep in my own bed.”  
  
Alana finally stepped back from him as they reached his porch. For a moment it felt strange walking the short steps, as if time itself around him shifted for a second. As quickly as the feeling came it went, and Alana’s voice brought him back to the present. “I know. But you can humour me for a cup of coffee, can’t you?”  
  
Will made a _I suppose_ noise and waited while she unlocked his front-door. Will barely had time to consider the safety of having a whole pack of dogs charge at him in his state before they appeared, a fluffy mass of lolling tongues and dark eyes lighting up like starlight at the sight of him. Alana seemed to recognise the danger at the last second, but Will ignored her call of concern in favour of the sudden light he felt in his chest.  
  
Buster was there first, with his tiny and stout body shaking like a leaf as he leapt around Will’s feet, his dark and floppy ears bouncing like wings. Max and Harley were behind, barking the loudest, while Zoe and Ellie hung back as if they couldn’t quite believe their eyes at the sight of their returning master. Jack came bounding downstairs at the very last moment (Will supposed he must have been staring out the upstairs window) and crashed through them all, his single orange ear bending inside out as he leapt high enough to cover Will’s face in kisses.  
  
For the first time in months, Will smiled. He ran his fingers all through Jack’s fur, he carefully knelt down to scoop Buster up while Max and Harley circled up and sniffed him all over, their tails wagging hard enough to _thud-thud-thud_ against the wall. Zoe and Ellie dashed forward with triumphant yips and yaps, adding to the congestion of fur and lolling tongues and happy faces. But, as Will let his dogs surround him, he frowned. “Where’s Winston?”  
  
Alana was stood behind him, still on the porch, kept stuck by the congestion of lolling tongues, happy eyes and bundles of fur. “He isn’t here?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“He might be out back,” she suggested. “Maybe he got out.” She survived the blocked entryway and laughed softly. “I’ll go check. I can enter the kitchen through the backdoor. It might be safer than trying to wade through this.”  
  
Will laughed back, faint but there. Alana footsteps grew faint, and he set Buster down to bury his fingers in the thick fur around Max’s neck, giving him a firm scritch-and-scratch before standing back up. Wading through his little pack was no easy task, but he wanted to find Winston. He took but two steps into his house when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.  
  
Something inside Will froze. The temperature in the room dropped. His fingers twitched.  
  
Then, slowly, he turned. Towards the fireplace. Towards the chair still sat in the corner. Towards the person who neatly filled it. The person with his long, swan-neck fingers delicately stroking behind Winston’s ears. Will’s faithful hound lounging at his feet.  
  
“Hello, Will,” said Hannibal, and he inclined his head towards the kitchen, where Alana could be heard fiddling with coffee cups. "Am I interrupting?" 


End file.
